There was a moment of stillness—only the whisper of a breath—when my magic seemed as if it were taking the upper hand. It felt as if that one gem could focus my strength exactly where it needed to be and I could finally overcome the base energy and that single changeling fey.
Then the stone exploded.
29
Frey
There was a flash of light and then a sudden, all-consuming darkness. I thought for a moment that I might have been blinded, but flickers of movement danced before my eyes. My body was wet and warm. Something solid pressed against my back in unsteady beats. My ears rang hollowly, and my mouth tasted of sulfur and something metallic.
My body jerked, and the pressing against my back became sharp and stinging. My hearing roared to life with the rush of the fight, with shouting and screaming and the crashing of trees. Something wrapped tightly around my leg, and I started, remembering the spells, but my vision cleared to find that I was hanging upside down, over a chasm.
I drew in a sharp, searing breath, and my body screamed in pain. The jagged rocks of the broken pit slammed into my shoulder, and as I flailed back to life, I became aware of frantic shouting. I stared up my own body to find the source of it: Junnie. She held tightly to my ankle, but I could see that her own injuries and the angle of my useless form were weighing her down.
Then I saw spikes of black creeping over her—the spellwork had hold of her shoulder and arm. Her expression said we’d only a matter of breaths. I glanced beneath me into the depths of the chasm and wished I hadn’t. Far below was nothing but darkness. At my back was nothing but shards of stone. I tried to reach my power, but my body seemed broken. My hands were a mess of blood and torn flesh.
The fires above us lit the sky, but the flicker of flame was broken by a sudden shadow.
Veil’s wide wings cut through the air as he dove down, grabbing hold of my torso to sling me toward Junnie. We crashed onto the ledge of the chasm, the spellwork surrounding her puffing into inky smoke before reforming. Veil was bloodied and snarling, and I had a feeling he must just have escaped from a trap of his own. He was free now, though, and he strode toward what I realized must have been the body of the changeling fey. I didn’t have time to watch him because Junnie was gasping for air.
I pushed the edge of her cloak away, but the spell held fast. There was nothing I could do. I glanced up, frantic, to find Chevelle crawling toward us. He’d been hurt badly by his fight with the fey, but his hands were blackened, oily things, and I knew he’d done what he needed to help us end Pitt. I glanced again at Veil, who stood gloriously over a broken changeling, and could see that bit at least would soon be done. Chevelle reached Junnie’s feet and threw ashen dust over the ground around us. It hissed and sizzled against the other spell, but Junnie still struggled for breath.
“What do I do?” My voice was raw, and all of me hurt, but the drive of the battle still roared through my veins.
Chevelle coughed then purposefully glanced across the field. As he began muttering the words of a spell, I followed his gaze to find Ruby, who was still burning, swallowed by flame.
My eyes caught Chevelle’s once more, and I knew that he had Junnie. It would take time, but he would save her. I leapt up, staggered, and fell forward. Anvil slammed into me, knocking me backward as he parried to save me from an oncoming blow. He shouted something, but Rhys had my arm and was dragging me away. I was unstable, but I could feel the magic inside me wanting to find its way out. Rhys propped me against him as we made our way across a battlefield of broken fey and shattered rock. A golden cloak from one of Junnie’s personal guards lay bloodied and torn, and shards of steel were scattered over the ground.
Rhys came to a stop before the inferno that was Ruby, and we fell to our knees beneath the heat of her flame. Grey waited there with his hands against the stone and Rider beside him, as if in supplication. I followed suit, placing my blistered palms onto the cold, flat stone. Rhys’s magic flowed through it already, and I could feel the cool burn of it as it joined his brother’s. They were trying to douse the flame and counter the magic, but that was not how it would work. There was an endless supply.
“We need to tear her free,” I said, “away from the fire and away from her tether to Pitt.”
Grey stared up at me, his concern plainly on his face. It might kill her.
“If we wait, she may suffer the same fate.” My words were cold but not untrue. With my head down once more, away from the searing heat, I prayed it would be neither and that we could save her.
Before my magic could be loosed into the earth, through the stone and the source of the energy in the darkness below, a cool hand gripped my shoulder.
I glared up at Liana.
She did not bother to look at me when she spoke. “Either way will end her now. She’s too far into the darkness to come safely free.”
“We will not do nothing.”
Liana had to have known that by then. She would have her own plan, and I wished she would just get on with telling us what it was. “There is a darkness beyond what lies beneath the Hollow Forest. You would do well to heed my warning.”
“What would you have us do?”
She looked at me, her eyes a chasm of blackness. “The darkness must be doused, not the halfling. If it is done quickly, there is a chance I can save her.”
My stomach dropped. “I can’t. The energy here is too powerful to wield on my own.”
“Not you,” Liana said. “Only the fey lord can move the river of energy beneath the earth here.”
I turned to find Veil and winced as he lifted the body of the changeling fey to tear it in two. He turned to face us, as if he’d heard Liana’s words—but he would have, because she’d spelled them to life.
Liana was a changeling.
Veil strode toward us, not bothering to fly, and I became abruptly aware of our position on the stone, with our palms and knees to the earth in supplication.
I stood to face him. “We’re out of time.”
His gaze flicked to Liana then back to me. “Did she tell you it could kill me?”
I frowned. She had not mentioned that bit.
“Why would I risk that for some halfling girl?” Veil asked as I waited.
My mouth went dry, tasting of nothing but ash and copper. This is it, then. He wants a bargain. I will have to sacrifice Ruby or—or what? What could he want? It doesn’t matter. I won’t do it. I couldn’t.
Beside me, a small breath escaped one of my Seven. I didn’t have to look to know it was Grey. It was only the slightest sound, but I could feel every bit of pain behind it.
He was watching Ruby die.
I swallowed back the words that wanted to rise and glanced at Chevelle with Junnie. Every time we came onto fey lands, our lives were put in danger, but we could not stay secure in our castle—our home—because the darkness was spreading. It wasn’t merely coming for the fey. It was coming for all of us.
“What do you want?” I said.
Veil stared at me incredulously. “My life,” he snapped. “Do you expect to bargain with it again?”
“Pitt would have betrayed me, and you know it. I had no other choice.”
His jaw went tight. “Your disloyalty to our agreement aside, you well know that I cannot risk my own skin when the entire realm is already in peril. Think of the chaos to follow.”
“You think she isn’t worth it,” I told him, “but if you do not save her, we will walk away.” My voice was steel, and in it was the threat of not just abandonment by my Seven and me, but by all of us, Junnie and Isa and the entire lot of his potential allies in the fight with the changelings against the darkness was coming.
Veil was unimpressed. “Do not threaten me, Lord Freya.”
“I’ve barely even started.”
Heat flared behind me, and Rhys and Rider shifted at my side. Their power was moving around us, fighting the inferno that I knew would take Ruby down. We were running out of time. I could not sacrifice my ki
ngdom in an attempt to save her or throw away my own life when so many others depended on it. But I was asking—demanding—that the fey lord to do the same.
“Is she worth it to you?” His voice was low, curious. Saving his lands, Veil could understand, but risking all for a single halfling, not as much.
I took a long breath. “We love her.” And then, because I doubted he would ever get that, I added, “She’s part of who we are.”
“And what for me?” he asked.
“A debt. Our gratitude.”
“You will do whatever it takes to save our kind.” His voice was level and clear, the words a bargain waiting to be sealed.
It was not to be taken lightly, but I would unquestionably do whatever it took to save an entire population from destruction. I could do nothing else. I released a slow breath, said my vow. “Whatever it takes.”
There was a beat of silence, utter stillness, and then the smallest crook to the corner of Veil’s mouth. I felt the blood drain from my face and turned to Liana.
Her expression was something short of a smile, her dark eyes rolling to meet mine. “It will be done.”
And then she turned, raising her hands at her sides and melting into the blue-black of a raven’s wing before shading to ash. Her power swelled through the stone, devouring the tingling of the others’ magic and the heat of the fire. Veil moved beside her, his wings tucked tightly against his back and his fingers curled into claws. Together, they drew out the energy, bringing it from beneath the earth into a cloud of smoke and flame. Anvil was beside me, dragging me back from the storm and toward Chevelle. Junnie was coughing, her words too severed to make any sense. Chevelle’s chants carried on, his voice hoarse and broken, but the smoke around Junnie appeared to be dissipating.
My eyes went back to Ruby, who was held taut in a vortex of darkness and fire. The energy Veil and Liana drew forth slowly swallowed up the flame. Ruby looked so small there, in the midst of it all, that I wondered how she could even be alive.
I leaned hard on Anvil, recalling that crook at the edge of the fey lord’s lips. Stomach in knots, eyes running tears and ash, I choked out, “What have I done?”
Anvil squeezed me to him, his body so solid and strong that it was a comfort even covered in blood. “It is never what you have done,” he told me quietly. “It is only what you will do.”
30
Frey
Ruby lay motionless, the rise and fall of her chest imperceptible. We’d been assured it was there, even if my heart ached to see it. Liana’s hands moved nimbly over Ruby, working to apply new tonics and herbs. She had sworn her stone on it, but I could not trust her after the bargain I’d just made.
I stared at Liana from the doorway. Her color had not returned, and I wondered what it had cost her to help save Ruby’s life. Veil had paid a hefty price as well. They’d drawn the energy away from Ruby, and the ground had shaken as the earth around us crumbled into the darkness below Hollow Forest. It was nothing but a pit, the tendrils of rock and earth snaking their way from where the fey lord had stood all that kept us from falling within.
Veil had collapsed. He’d been lifted from the spot where he’d landed—from where he’d caught Ruby’s limp body, so small and broken—and was carried through the sky to what I had assumed would be his home. But Veil’s home was gone, all of it destroyed.
I felt no empathy, though, because all I saw when I thought of him was the tilt of his mouth. The crook of his lips had said he’d won.
That didn’t matter anymore. Ruby was alive and would become well.
Pitt was dead. If Chevelle hadn’t risked his own life to lay spelled hands on the changeling, he would have been able to draw that power through Ruby and the river beneath Hollow Forest. It could have devoured us all. Chevelle had saved us. Pitt was truly gone this time and no longer a threat.
But someone else had been there in the forest, as well, a powerful spellcaster capable of whatever plans the changeling had laid in place. Someone who would have been able to tie the thing that was part of how Ruby’s magic worked to other fey and to release them from their bonds to the energy beneath the earth.
For too long, there had been far more at play than I’d been aware of. Before I’d even been brought into being, Asher had made plans with the fey. The changelings were not the only ones in on the plot, and my people were at risk before any of us had even known it. And I’d made another bargain with a fey lord.
We had been spared, but none of it was over. Not even close. I thought of Junnie and her confessions about Isa. Even she had known there was more to all of this. I could not help but wonder why everyone had held the secrets so close to their chests.
Chevelle had saved Junnie as well. The two did not agree on most things, but they’d formed a tenuous accord over restoring me. Junnie’s men had taken her home, but she couldn’t have been pleased that a spell had nearly brought her down. There would be recompense for whoever had done so.
The magic used for spellwork was a dark, malevolent thing, and the one we had just defeated was especially vile. But Chevelle had the connection to the darkness required for casting. It was only that connection that allowed Junnie to live and breathe. Junnie’s connection was only to the light magic, but mine was to both the light and the dark, and Veil’s was to the fey energy.
“You should rest,” Chevelle said beside me, sliding a hand over the small of my back.
I might have startled if I’d not been so exhausted. I frowned. “Pitt must have been in league with someone else, someone who had a connection—” I cut my words cut off when I realized Liana was still in earshot. I glanced at Chevelle. “The ability to spellcast at that level. Otherwise, he would not have been able to break the bonds you placed on him or to plan to cast whatever is necessary to bypass the base energy and sustain their own power.”
He only watched me. He had worked it all out already, likely the first time the darkness had brushed his skin. But I couldn’t trust any of the assumptions I’d always made. I couldn’t help but wonder whether the deadening of the base energy was not the humans’ fault at all and if the meddling with the darkness the fey and Asher had done had set it afoot to begin with. A chill ran over me at the memory of the dark magic and how it had always seeped through at Hollow Forest, exploding occasionally into fires. And now, Hollow Forest was gone. The darkness ran free.
“Come,” Chevelle said. “There will be time enough to deal with what remains.” I stared up at him, aware of the helplessness plain on my face. He gave me a smile, though the cut on his lip had to have made it painful. “What was it you promised me? The kingdom has your days.”
But you have my nights. I let out a tired sigh and leaned into him. “Then let it be. For I am a woman of my word.”
31
Thea
Thea walked through the darkened corridors of the castle, the restrictions placed on the rest of the guard lifted from her. She was a healer, the only one they trusted to watch a changeling fey. Lord Freya had placed constant guards on Liana, but Thea was to drop in at least twice a day to check the herbs and poultices and to be certain Liana was not sneaking something unacceptable in.
Ruby had been returned to her rooms. She was far improved and occasionally awake, but the trauma she’d been through had not been easy on her, and it would be a while before she was recovered. It was better that way, because when she did come out of her stupor, she was notoriously hard to treat. When she wasn’t smacking away Liana’s ministrations, she was muttering nonsense about winged horses and flying elves.
The mess the fey had left behind was long gone, cleaned by the castle staff. Thea wasn’t certain if the bodies had been burned, for when the fey died on elven lands, their magic could not be returned to the earth. She’d not asked, because her thoughts had been otherwise occupied in the week since the attack.
Things were settled again, though, and as she walked from the corridor into a stone courtyard, she felt the reassuring usualness of it all. Duer w
as working with a few of the newer recruits, their weapons sharp and deadly. A group of older guards stood nearby, watching a sparring match with longsword and spear. By the far wall was the dark-haired girl Thea had encountered in the dying lands past the fey forests, the one who had been helping Ruby. She was on her hands and knees, scouring the blocks with a well-worn brush. Barris stood over her, probably offering his aid, but the girl steadfastly refused. “I am of the guard,” she snapped. “It is my duty.”
Barris looked up at Thea, shaking his head. Thea bit back her smile, and Barris raised his shoulders in a shrug. There was really only so much he could do.
Thea walked through a tall stone archway, following the narrowing path ahead. She had finally found her nooks and crannies and could be counted on to hide in them at least once a day. The path wound farther from the interior of the castle, the structure’s overhead stonework throwing light and shadow across her way. Before it reached the haven that was the stables, Thea ducked into an alcove, completely shadowed from the waning day.
The cool stone pressed against her back, and she took a slow, mind-easing breath. It could be so quiet in the darkness, so much more like the days she’d spent at home. Those times had been fraught with worry for her father, though, and that was all gone. When she searched out that stillness those days, it was only to find some peace, some small corner of her own, where she was not a guard to the North and its lord with the responsibilities that entailed but where she was only Thea.
A shadow shifted in the cool quiet of her darkness, but Thea did not flinch. There was something in it that was slow, smooth, and familiar. “Have you never been warned away from lurking in the shadows?” Her hand rested on the hilt of her dagger, evidence she was not to be trifled with.
The Frey Saga Book V Page 15
